Setting Down the Rules on Facebook

At 13 years old, my older son asked me over and over why he couldn’t have a Facebook account. For a year I managed to convince him to wait a little longer. I wanted to be certain he was ready for the responsibility—and I wanted to make sure I was ready, too.

Last month my son turned fourteen and he is now in the minority as a 9th grader who still doesn’t have a Facebook account. “It’s starting to look weird,” he told me recently. “People ask me to friend them on Facebook and I have to tell them I don’t have an account.”